The Last of Us

HBO's adaptation of the brutal, post-apocalyptic video game is entirely faithful to its source material—yet pushes it beyond its creators' wildest ...

[Marvel Cinematic Universe](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a40458776/marvel-cinematic-universe-mcu/) is playfully hop-skipping through the aftermath of losing half of its own population. For the uninitiated: The Last of Us doesn't have the merriest worldview of the end of civilization. The Last of Us has always seemed to say that the end of times will reduce each of us to our extremes—our very worst and, if we're lucky, very best parts. The Last of Us—which visually, in the best way, watches like a shot-for-shot recreation of the video game—opens with the grizzly Joel (Pascal) and his brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna) on the day that shit hits the fan. [2013's ](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a40960610/the-last-of-us-hbo-release-date-trailer-details/) [The Last of Us](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a23036/the-last-of-us-video-game/)—game developer Naughty Dog's brutalist masterpiece—to my fellow editors at Esquire. Loyalists of the video game will probably ask if The Last of Us is even half as harsh as its PlayStation counterpart. [The Last of Us Part II](https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a32907593/last-of-us-part-2-review-ellie-abby/) completionists certainly know—the game goes to painstaking lengths to show you its belief that we're all capable of becoming the thing we swear we are not. [sequel](https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a32910275/last-of-us-part-2-narrative-lead-halley-gross-interview/) released in 2017), or are simply curious about why [Pedro Pascal](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a39752344/pedro-pascal-oscar-isaac-video-interview/) and Bella Ramsey are hamming it up on a press tour together, fear not: HBO's The Last of Us, which debuts January 15, pushes the already-brilliant story beyond its creators' wildest nightmares. Joel gets wrapped up in the wheelings and dealings of a rebel faction, called the Fireflies, who ask him to smuggle a young girl named Ellie (Ramsey) across the cordyceps-ridden country. In the distance, as Joel and Ellie platform buildings, we see toppled skyscrapers, leaning on each other like books on a shelf. Really, it's 2023's [first great television show](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/g42288393/best-tv-shows-2023/). That's the gist of The Last of Us, to which HBO said [fuck-your-video-game-adaptation-curse](https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/g27664881/best-video-game-movies/), developed it into a TV series, and cleared its coveted Sunday night slot for it to air.

Here's a sentence that I never thought I'd type: The Last of Us airs its first episode tonight on HBO and HBO Max. It's a surreal feeling.

Neil, Craig and the production team took this opportunity to weave in new characters, themes, and locations — only where they felt true to the characters and the world, the “soul” of The Last of Us. As you can imagine, I’m extremely excited (and extremely nervous) for PlayStation and Naughty Dog fans to dive into the first episode and experience for themselves the love the cast and crew has poured into this adaptation. I can’t wait for the world to experience their portrayals and the rest of these unforgettable characters in an entirely new way.

The HBO drama, based on a video game, works best as a post-catastrophe travelogue, teasing out the ways survivors rebuild mini-societies with new alignments ...

Multicolored fungi bloom across the faces of the infected, leaving intact the mouths and teeth with which they attack, as they join a teeming, growing army that appears to know no natural death, and only lies dormant, waiting. Scott Shepherd is as terrifying as any of the spore-heads in his role as a soft-voiced pastor who preys on his followers’ need for solace and guidance. Between the monomaniacal militias and the self-cannibalizing cults, a deserted preschool classroom, constructed underground, stands as a brightly muraled testament to the blind hope that many parents still nursed for their children, while a heavily guarded commune risks the messy ideals of equality and coöperation even in the face of existential peril. A fascination with panicked brutality links “The Last of Us,” co-created by Craig Mazin, to his previous series, “Chernobyl.” On the autumn night in 2003 that the cordyceps arrive in Austin, a construction worker named Joel (Pedro Pascal) attempts to flee in a truck with his teen-age daughter, Sarah (Nico Parker), and his younger brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna). “Station Eleven,” the defiantly optimistic portrait of a Shakespearean theatre troupe wayfaring through a post-pandemic Midwest, is another precursor, in images if not in tone; the Ozymandian sights of nature’s reclamations in “The Last of Us”—ducks and frogs swimming blithely in a flooded hotel lobby, or a herd of roaming giraffes seemingly escaped from a zoo—conjure that same beauty of perseverance amid desolation. When the mutation is first discovered, in Jakarta, a petrified mycologist advises, “Bomb this city and everyone in it.”

'The Last of Us' is now widely recognized as one of the best video games of all time. Ten years after its release, the team behind the game is attempting to ...

'The Last of Us' is now widely recognized as one of the best video games of all time. A solidarity mass is underway in a town north of Montreal where three people remain missing following a fire and explosion at a propane distribution company. ](https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/10/entertainment/white-lotus-cringeworthy-moments/index.html)Those series all went on to earn accolades -- most recently [Golden Globes](https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/10/entertainment/golden-globe-winners-2023/index.html) for "House of the Dragon" and "The White Lotus." Joel and Ellie are still our protagonists, and most of the series is dedicated to their relationship (albeit with some attacks by fungus-monster-people interspersed). Oh, and sensitive viewers, beware -- "The Last of Us" can be deeply sad. [bleak "Chernobyl" miniseries](https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/22/entertainment/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes-review/index.html). Its sequel might even trump the original in terms of emotional devastation (no spoilers here -- the HBO adaptation's creators (In its original 2013 interview, IGN called their rapport "one of the great highlights" of the game.) He's an often relentless smuggler with a deep-buried paternal side; she's a parentless teen with the mouth of a sailor and a dangerous secret. ["The Last of Us"](https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/10/entertainment/the-last-of-us-review/index.html) is now widely recognized as one of the best video games of all time. From its heart-wrenching story to its celebrated cast, here's why fans of the game and prospective new viewers can't wait to watch "The Last of Us" when it debuts Sunday night. [ "The Walking Dead"](https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/21/entertainment/the-walking-dead-series-finale/index.html) had concluded its third season, ["World War Z"](https://www.cnn.com/2013/06/21/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/world-war-z-review-ew/index.html) was expected to be a summer blockbuster and "Resident Evil" was still perhaps the best-known zombie-starring video game. [zombie apocalypse genre](https://www.cnn.com/style/article/zombie-50th-anniversary-night-of-the-living-dead/index.html) had been done to death.

Inspired by the Naughty Dog video game, the new HBO Max series stars Pedro Pascal as Joel and Bella Ramsey as Ellie — here's when and how to stream.

[Best Buy](https://howl.me/ciVCIgP6lUk) [Best Buy](https://howl.me/ciVCHNjQWvd) [GameStop](https://go.skimresources.com?id=87443X1644750&xs=1&xcust=THR--watchthelastofus&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamestop.com%2Fvideo-games%2Fplaystation-4%2Fproducts%2Fthe-last-of-us-part-ii---playstation-4%2F217700.html&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) [GameStop](https://go.skimresources.com?id=87443X1644750&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamestop.com%2Fvideo-games%2Fplaystation-5%2Fproducts%2Fthe-last-of-us-part-1-playstation-5%2F344866.html&xcust=THR--watchthelastofus&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) Alternatively, you can subscribe to [Prime Video](https://www.amazon.com/hp/video/offers/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=hollywoodre01-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=af95329876de6cd89bca85bb435cbc9e&camp=1789&creative=9325&asc_source=web&asc_campaign=web&asc_refurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) as a standalone service for $9 monthly. Prime Video is access included with a membership to [Amazon Prime](https://www.amazon.com/amazonprime?linkCode=ll2&tag=hollywoodre01-20&linkId=7a0b52b2d6b8dc93380cf3ea9b3f836c&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&asc_source=web&asc_campaign=web&asc_refurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) ($15 monthly or $139 annually), offers a 30-day free trial for new members. While it’s not required to have survived the action horror game to understand the show, see below to find out where to shop The Last of Us video games and comic book spinoffs online. A remake, The Last of Us: Part I was released last September for PS5, and it will soon be available on the gaming platform [Hulu](https://go.skimresources.com/?id=87443X1644750&xs=1&xcust=THR--watchthelastofus%7Cxid%3Afr1673812277529gbh&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hulu.com%2Fhbomax&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) or when they add the [HBO Max channel](https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/storefront?contentType=subscription&contentId=hbomaxus&benefitId=hbomaxus&linkCode=ll2&tag=hollywoodre01-20&linkId=d6388faa4314532058c2c7786b263e46&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&asc_source=web&asc_campaign=web&asc_refurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) on Amazon’s Prime Video, which both offer seven-day free trials. PT/9 p.m. Once bitten by one of the infected, the teen’s immunity may hold the secret to a cure for the virus that has wiped out most of humanity. The TV adaptation of the popular post-apocalyptic video game debuts Sunday exclusively on HBO Max, and brings together a slew of fan-favorite stars from the studio’s other hit series.

[Ed. note: The rest of this piece contains incrementally increasing spoilers for The Last of Us (2013).] pedro pascal crouching, with bella ramsey at his ...

In the final act of The Last of Us (2013), Joel and an unconscious Ellie arrive in Salt Lake City following many brutal adventures, and Ellie is immediately taken in for treatment. Whether the ending of The Last of Us is a true twist ending is arguable. And The Last of Us has plenty of child death to go around (and not just the horrific one in its first episode). But it is an ending that firmly recontextualizes the kind of story that The Last of Us is. The ending of The Last Of Us is not ambiguous in its contents, containing a crystal clear succession of events and motivations — and at the same time, it leaves room for every player to form their own opinion on it. If you were within five yards of a video game in 2013, you may have gotten the sense that The Last of Us tells a story whose ending spawned significant debate.

Pedro Pascal is Joel<p> Game of Thrones/The Mandalorian's Pedro Pascal stars. 20 Images. Bella Ramsey as Ellie<p> Game of Thrones' Bella Ramsey plays Ellie ...

Though the trailers have given us a glimpse that much of the premise will follow along with the original game, chances are there are going to be a lot of shake ups along the way. In the The Last of Us: American Dreams prequel comic, we see that Ellie and her friend Riley were captured by the Fireflies, and the latter worked hard to join the group only to die after being infected through a bite. The Last of Us is based in a post-apocalyptic world where a mutation of the cordyceps fungus broke out and decimated the population. In the beginning, the Fireflies not only wanted to end FEDRA’s violent rule and return to a more democratic form of government, they were also a primary group actively searching for a cure. One major teaser dropped in The Last of Us trailers has been the introduction of the Fireflies, a major rebellious faction in the games that just about every character is tied to in some way or another. After the 2011 release of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us game, it didn’t take long for the concept to dip its toe in the world of the multimedia franchise.

Neil Druckmann, the writer of 2013's The Last of Us and now co-writer on the HBO television series of the same name, drew much of his story inspiration from ...

(As in Children of Men, which is set in London, there’s a shade of the IRA in this movement.) FEDRA’s largest crime, however, appears to be its use of military might in controlling the population. (We're not sure what the implication here might be—perhaps FEDRA cares only about control and prevention, rather than the more noble pursuit of change.) What makes the Firefly politics confusing, however, is their cause for revolution. In the video game, the Fireflies seek to restore pre-pandemic governance. In the video game, he launched terror attacks against military targets in Denver.) The method is bombing and political violence—attacks on guard posts and armored patrols. In the game, that resistance comes by means of the Fireflies, rebels who oppose the military leadership through widespread bombings and attacks on military targets. (Though, primarily for the male protagonist.) In fact, Children of Men is such dominating influence on the aesthetics, tone, and central narrative of The Last of Us, the core character relationship in each is the same: an older man and a younger woman, the former having to shepherd the latter, who represents the “cure,” through a collapsing world. James novel](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307275434), which is set in a dystopian Europe and follows society’s gradual collapse in the face of mass infertility. [apparently walked out of a movie theater in 2006](https://venturebeat.com/games/naughty-dogs-neil-druckmann-on-the-inspirations-for-the-last-of-us/) wandering why video games couldn’t do what he had just seen.

'The Last of Us' set a gold standard for video-game storytelling. The adaptation's premiere makes it clear HBO doesn't want to screw that up.

She also learns that Marlene does not like being called a terrorist, particularly when she knows she’s working for a greater purpose and Ellie is essential to the cause. Meanwhile, Joel and Tess plot payback on the battery dealer who ripped them off, a pursuit that eventually brings them to Firefly headquarters, or what’s left of it. These include, of course, FEDRA soldiers, including Joel’s painkiller customer, who seems willing to bargain with them for their escape until Ellie stabs him before he can see she tests positive for infection, after which Joel murders him with his bare fists (after a brief flashback to Sarah) as Tess and Ellie look on. But that doesn’t get in the way of her expressing her resentment with defiant sarcasm. After Sarah joins Joel and Tommy in a pick-up with a quarter tank of gas, the three speed across the outskirts of Austin only to find the highway choked with traffic and the fields filled with soldiers. There’s kindness in the way the soldier tells the girl, “What if I told you that after we gave you some medicine, we’re going to find you your favorite food to eat?” but it’s a lie. When Joel and Sarah encounter a soldier, it quickly becomes apparent he’s going to kill them, presumably acting on orders to take extreme measures to contain the spread of the infection. When Tess finds herself in the middle of a FEDRA-Firefly street fight, she does her best not to get involved. The series begins in a slightly different place, opening with a scene set at the taping of a talk show in 1968 in which a smug interviewer talks to two scientists. (Could the sirens she’s been hearing all day have something to do with it?) And she’s helpful with the Adlers, the family next door with the nice dog and a senile, wheelchair-bound mother named Connie who never talks. [PlayStation 3 game in the summer of 2013](https://www.vulture.com/article/the-last-of-us-hbo-adaptation-review-non-gamers.html), The Last of Us drew breathless praise from reviewers, but that’s not particularly unusual. But the show also feels like its own creation, in large part because the series, and its well-chosen cast, emphasize the emotions at the heart of the game, including an interest in what place morality has in a brutal postapocalyptic world and a sense that it is connections between people that make life meaningful, even when surrounded by monsters.

HBO's super-sized series premiere saw Joel (Pedro Pascal) navigate trauma and find new purpose in Ellie (Bella Ramsey), plus some video-game callbacks.

People don’t love that sequence because it’s two minutes of CGI forming different shapes; they love it because it’s two minutes of CGI telling a story of sorts by establishing the geography of the series as a whole and of individual episodes, changing periodically to introduce new spots on the map or prepare us to return to little-visited places like The Pyke. While the idea of the spores rising into something resembling a city — i.e., a metaphor for how the world as we know it has been consumed by the mushrooms — is clever, it’s still ultimately just a bunch of shapes, and not interesting enough to go on for as long as it does. And we discover that Marlene needs Ellie to get to her other Fireflies out west because Ellie is somehow immune to the infection. Ellie is not as in command of the situation as Tess was, but we also quickly see that she is not afraid of being shackled to a wall by armed people who won’t explain why they want her. Then purpose arrives in the form of Ellie, a girl close in age to Sarah who needs passage out of the city. He is emotionally closed-off and efficiently brutal, and when his new charge Ellie is threatened by a soldier late in the episode, he has a PTSD flashback to Sarah’s death and turns absolutely savage in the way he beats on this man. [zombies](https://www.rollingstone.com/t/zombies/), though we do get the disgusting imagery of a dead body absorbed into a wall of fungus when Joel and the others traverse an underground tunnel late in the hour. (We are introduced to her surrounded by armed men after a beating, yet it is clear that she is in command of the room the entire time, and would likely have found a way out of her predicament even if a conveniently-timed Firefly bomb hadn’t given her an escape route.) He is existing rather than living, haunted by the loss of his daughter even more than the loss of everything else he knew, with few goals beyond getting through the next day. Before we get to that violent escape from Boston, we first have to establish the state of America 20 years after the zombie uprising. So I’ll be discussing this episode, and all the ones to come, solely on the basis of how it works as a television show. But before that, we have to watch civilization fall in the way it tends to in so many dystopian shows and movies. Instead, creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann are using those scenes to establish emotional stakes for Joel, and to make us deeply feel at least some of the pain he experiences when Sarah is shot by a panicked soldier on the night the world is wrecked.

We get to know Sarah (and the pandemic) a bit more in episode 1 of the show than we do in the game.

That turns out to not be the case, but Joel absent-mindedly tossing the kid’s body into a fire shows how inured he is to the violence and chaos of his world, and how much growth he’ll have to do to become the man players know he becomes by the end of the game (and this first season). I knew that Bella Ramsey had been cast to play Ellie, but when I saw the little girl at the start of the flash forward — wearing a maroon shirt not dissimilar from the one Ellie is often pictured in — I thought maybe we were seeing a younger Ellie. - The game left it ambiguous, but strongly hinted that Joel and Tess used to be romantically involved. But the soldier isn’t so charitable to his dealer, and is determined to turn the three in. Joel snaps and beats the soldier to death with his bare hands. The Fireflies are a resistance group against the militarization of quarantine zones. The child is infected, and the militarized police force opts for euthanization. That scene is mirrored in the show, but even before that, Joel talks about how he barely wants to share a construction job with Tommy, and isn’t interested in anyone else’s help. All the while, Sarah attends school, and later seeks out a watch repair shop; she wants to fix an old watch as a gift for her dad. The brothers return right on time to whisk Sarah to safety after she wakes up in the night to find nobody home and the neighbors’ place in disarray. In the game, the original performance of this scene by Troy Baker laid the groundwork for the game’s tone. But first, we get to learn about the nature of the pandemic.

Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey take their first steps through HBO's all-new take on the apocalypse. Here's how the first round of 'The Last of Us' plays out.

She spends it fixing her dad’s watch (with her dad’s money), studying after school with the next-door neighbor (why is one of them acting so strange, and what’s up with those whispy tendrils poking out of her mouth?), and falling asleep next to Joel while watching a movie. It doesn’t matter what it is, at least not now, and certainly not after Joel clobbers this neighbor over the head with a wrench, scoops Sarah up into a truck alongside his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna), and hits the road for somewhere—anywhere—safe. In the scene, Hannah’s scientist delivers a chilling monologue, predicting the fall of mankind to a terrifying and unlikely culprit: fungus. Hailing from the house that built House of the Dragon, The Last of Us stands out as HBO’s first major post-dragon genre effort. “One gene mutates,” he continues, “and any one of them could become capable of burrowing into our brains and taking control of not millions of us, but billions of us. In today’s day and age, a tragic amount of folks have celebrated their birthdays with pandemic pancakes.

We leap ahead to 2003 where we meet Sarah Miller (Nico Parker) and her father, Joel (Pedro Pascal). The single dad lives with his daughter in the outskirts of ...

Still, this is largely all stage-setting and the meat of the story is still to come. He traded pills to a FEDRA soldier in return for the promise of a truck (minus the battery). The argument is interrupted by a bomb blast that knocks the walls in and knocks out Robert’s men. Tess and Joel gather intel on where their battery is and go to find it, eventually coming to the secret Firefly base where Ellie is being held. Nervous and unconvinced, they decide to let her live and move on into the night before FEDRA can catch up with them. All of this is conveyed in a talk show in 1960, and essentially spells out exactly what’s about to come in the story proper. We also meet members of the Fireflies, a revolutionary group that’s been carrying out bombings and other attacks across the QZ. The soldier checks in with his commanding officer and is told to shoot to kill, which he does, wounding Joel and killing Sarah. She visits their elderly neighbors (where we see the first signs of the infection taking hold, possibly thanks to corrupted biscuits) and when Joel returns from work—late, without a cake—they watch a movie together and she falls asleep on the couch. The game came out in 2013, the show in 2023. It’s his birthday but he’s off to a long day on the job as a contractor with his brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna). Just the end of the world.

The laughter from the studio audience dissipates as the epidemiologist gravely explains how a parasitic fungus can do more than simply kill its host. As science ...

The sight of a gun pointed at a young girl reminds Joel of the soldier that killed Sarah, and in a rage he rushes the soldier and beats him senseless. Marlene promises that if Ellie is delivered safely to the State House, the Fireflies there will provide him and Tess with everything they need to track down Tommy. Tommy, we learn, is a Firefly, too, and this was a major cause of tension between the brothers. Robert, apparently, was going to sell the battery to the Fireflies instead of Tess. The Fireflies detonated a car bomb and are trading bullets with the gathering FEDRA forces. But Marlene ( [Merle Dandridge](https://ew.com/person/merle-dandridge/)), the leader of this area's Firefly faction, appears confident that she's healthy. A filthy child wanders through an empty park overgrown with weeds, staring down the blasted ruins of Boston, where slumping highrises and the vestiges of infrastructure are choked with suffocating vines and wads of dirt-crusted stone. The trio's offroading leads them to a downtown in disarray. Ambulances and police cars blare in the streets, jets carve the clouds, and the radio reports of unrest in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. [Pedro Pascal](https://ew.com/person/pedro-pascal/)) is the single father of Sarah (Nico Parker). A smirking host speaks with a pair of epidemiologists about the possibility of a pandemic. Joel and Sarah's quiet night celebrating his birthday is disrupted when Tommy calls to ask his brother to bail him out of jail.

We zip forward to 2003, ten years before the opening of the game, and get a really nice sequence with Joel (Pedro Pascal), his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and ...

In this case, the writers and producers had to condense a 15-hour game into a 10-hour season of television. It doesn’t always work out (many movie adaptations of video games aren’t exactly great), but things can’t stay always precisely the same as they were in the source. Deviating from Joel and Ellie’s story to tell another one in this universe — something that wouldn’t be possible for the game to do — is an exciting change. I enjoyed the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie, which is nothing like any of the games, and I’m interested to see how the Gran Turismo film shakes out, given that it’s about someone who’s very skilled at those games becoming a real-life racing driver. In the same way, a movie that adapted any of the core Mario games exactly would quickly fall flat. We get to see some of what Sarah’s day-to-day existence is like in the hours before the outbreak occurs. Changing how the infection spreads from spores to fungus, for instance, means that the actors don’t have to wear masks in some scenes. They hit the story beats they needed to while changing things up enough to surprise fans of the game and, at least in some places, make the narrative work better in another medium. Things that work in a novel may not in a film, and retelling a game beat-for-beat in a TV show doesn’t make a lot of sense. The cold open is a scene from a ‘60s talk show, which is immediately a new twist. Thanks in part to some of the different paths it takes, HBO’s adaptation of the 2013 game is off to a stellar start. Even when it’s a game that’s as cinematic as The Last of Us.

The Cordyceps brain infection, as it would come to be known, infected and/or killed roughly 60% of the population just a short time later. The amount who ...

The Last of Us is available on HBO in US. So, we challenged ourselves to come up with an interesting new way for the fungus to spread." Then after a year has passed, the fungus scars the host and blinds them completely, forcing them to use a new, primitive method of echolocation to find their way around. Within two weeks of infection, the host begins to lose their sight as a fungal growth corrupts their visual cortex. Those are the clickers who you're going to see a lot of this season. That's where we see the host lose their higher brain function, leaving behind those aggressive, irrational, zombie-like people we see at the start of the show and game. The Cordyceps brain infection, as it would come to be known, infected and/or killed roughly 60% of the population just a short time later. [The Last of Us](https://www.digitalspy.com/last-of-us/) isn't exactly [your standard zombie thriller](https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a42429477/last-of-us-review-tv/), and that's clear from the beginning of the very first episode. How do we know 60% of the population were lost so quickly? In 1968, there was no evidence that this same process could affect humans because the human body is simply too warm for these strains of fungi to survive in. Humans now live in closed-off areas where guards check anyone coming in to see if they've been infected by the outbreak. [The Last of Us](https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a42141245/the-last-of-us-first-trailer/) spoilers follow.

The zombie apocalypse depicted in the popular video game series and newly adapted HBO series “The Last of Us” derives from a mutation to a type of fungus ...

The zombie apocalypse depicted in the popular video game series and newly adapted HBO series “The Last of Us” derives from a mutation to a type of fungus called cordyceps. This should probably come as no surprise, though: Unlike in the games and show, cordyceps, as we currently know it, will not turn you into a zombie. Cordyceps is real, and some

The opening scene shows two epidemiologists speaking on a talk show in 1968, speculating about significant viral threats to human existence. One says viruses ...

We wanted to give us much reality as we could because the realer that is, the more we connect to the characters that are in that space playing around.” The game had spores in the air and people had to wear gas masks, and we decided, early on, that we didn’t want to do that for the show,” he said. Druckmann added: “With the more recently infected, we had a lot of conversation about what that vector could look like because there are certain things from the game that we took away. Mazin continued that the audience is more knowledgeable about pandemics these days than they were when the game first came out in 2013. This scene is pivotal to explaining how the outbreak in The Last of Us begins. The disease that wipes out most of humanity in The Last of Us is a fungus—a mutated microorganism known as cordyceps, which actually does exist in real life, but it can’t infect humans. “There’s a fungus that infects insects, it gets inside an ant, travels through its circulatory system to the ant’s brain and then floods it with hallucinogens, thus bending the ant’s mind to its will. The airborne spores that required gas masks to navigate are gone and instead, we have tendrils (which, by the way, will make your skin crawl from a visual perspective), potentially given the real-life COVID pandemic wherein a mask helps slows transmission. “So, if that happens—” the talk show host begins. [devour its host](https://stylecaster.com/watch-the-walking-dead-online-free/) from within replacing, the ant’s flesh with its own, but it doesn’t let its victim die. How did The Last of Us outbreak start? But in the end, we always win,” he explains, adding that fungus will be humanity’s undoing “in the most dire terms” and alludes to how it might begin.

Writer-producer Craig Mazin fact-checks the HBO premiere's eerie prologue ("It's real…"), plus discusses that perfect song choice at the episode's end.

And I needed it to have context. I needed to have be foreboding, and ideally, without being super on the nose, give me a comment. I needed to be meaningful. I need it to be a song that I kind of know but I haven’t heard in a long time. — from a purely scientific point of view, would they do exactly to us what they do to ants? “It’s real — it’s real to the extent that everything he says that fungus do, they do,” Mazin says. I needed to start a particular way so we can show that radio turning on. It was so upsetting to say to people, ‘We knew about this, it’s been there, now we’re gonna show you the night it finally happens.’ Not suddenly, but finally.” “And they currently do it and have been doing it forever. “If the world were to get slightly warmer, then there is reason to evolve,” he said. The Last of Us got underway Sunday night with an eerie cold open prologue that’s set on a talk show in 1963. An epidemiologist (played by the wonderful John Hannah, of The Mummy and Spartacus fame) gives a dire warning to an incredulous host (Silicon Valley’s Joshua Max Brener) about the looming fungal threat.

It has been described as "comfortably the best adaptation of a video game ever made" that has been able to "break the curse" on gaming-TV crossovers.

"Through Ellie, we see its wonder. "Through Joel, we feel the heartbreak of this world," its chief television critic said. "The design is stunning: vistas of deserted, bombed out metropolises are matched by sprawling, Western inflected, shots of rural America." All this to an audience who may not traditionally engage with games. [there's some stand out acting in the series](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/jan/11/the-last-of-us-tv-finally-has-the-perfect-video-game-adaptation) acknowledging "it's a bold statement to make" but episode three "might well be one of the TV episodes of 2023". [gave it four stars, saying](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/the-last-of-us-review-pedro-pascal-hbo-b2258847.html) it's "undoubtedly a new landmark in the seemingly impossible task of adapting video games".

The "zombie virus" introduced in HBO's The Last of Us is unlike any you've ever seen before...

What’s so terrifying about this infection is that while we typically think of zombies as reanimated corpses that have been killed and then brought back to life by some sort of virus, the Cordyceps fungus technically keeps the host alive through this entire process, even though they aren’t conscious or in control. This stage of Cordyceps can occur anywhere between two weeks to a year after infection as the fungus takes further control over the host’s body. The next stage of infection is the Stalker, categorized by fungal plates that have begun to grow over the eyes. With that said, let’s dive into the different stages of infection we could see in this season of The Last of Us. Even though a newspaper found in the prologue of the game shows that the FDA tried to slow the spread by issuing food recalls, the incubation rate is so fast that hospitals quickly became overwhelmed at the onset of the outbreak. In this world, the Cordyceps fungus has mutated to infect the brains of humans, turning them into violent and bloodthirsty creatures intent on spreading the fungus as widely as possible.

In this case, the relationship between survivor Joel (Pedro Pascal), who's haunted by the loss of his daughter 20 years ago, and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a strong- ...

[Chernobyl](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/chernobyl-is-more-terrifying-than-you-think/)’s Craig Mazin at the helm as showrunner and the game’s director Neil Druckmann onboard as a co-showrunner, HBO’s The Last of Us has every chance to be a worthy adaptation of one of the best video games of all time. But The Last of Us series isn’t just acclaimed for the characters and writing. You can almost smell the desecration and despair wafting through the Boston streets as Joel hauls the body of an executed boy (who we meet earlier in the episode…brutal) to a pyre for FEDRA. When Joel, Ellie, and Tess are held at gunpoint by the FEDRA soldier Joel’s been dealing pills to on the side as they’re on their way out of the quarantine zone, we see a fleeting image of Joel cradling Sarah right before she was shot. When the story jumps ahead 20 years and we find Joel in a ravaged Boston, working macabre odd jobs for FEDRA, the last remnants of the US government, you can feel the years of brutal post-apocalyptic survivalism and grieving for Sarah has taken its toll on him, and that he’s harboring some serious regret and self-loathing. The show obviously can’t offer us the same type of immersion, but what it does offer is more time with Sarah as she goes about her day, getting her dad’s watch repaired for his birthday, and visiting their neighbors. The story then jumps to 2003, introducing us to young Sarah Miller (Nico Parker), her father Joel, and his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna), who together try to make it out of Austin alive during the emergence of the cordyceps outbreak. [Game of Thrones](https://www.denofgeek.com/game-of-thrones/) as the fearless Lyanna Mormont, and her natural ability to embody someone beyond her years despite her age and diminutive stature is on full display in her turn as Ellie as well. Will the new actors live up to the performances of the original cast? The show also adds a few new narrative wrinkles to the proceedings, such as a flashback to a 1968 talk show on which an epidemiologist (John Hannah) explains that fungi are a much greater threat to humankind than any virus, being that in certain cases, fungi can take control over the bodies of living hosts like ants and, potentially, humans. Judging from the first episode of HBO’s The Last of Us, fans have nothing to fear — other than the infected fungal monstrosities waiting at every turn in this refreshingly faithful adaptation. In this case, the relationship between survivor Joel (

Vanity Fair chronicles all the similarities between HBO's post-apocalyptic adaptation 'The Last of Us' and the video game it's based on.

From that point, both the show and the game’s versions of the scene play very similarly to one another, all the way down to the dialogue. The Last of Us TV series and video game open differently from one another, with the HBO adaptation presenting a wholly original scene set during a 1968 TV interview. The story of Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), survivors of a society-shattering plague fighting to, well, keep surviving, requires very little invention, due to the original game’s cinematic nature.

Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey lead this white-knuckle adaptation of the survival-horror gaming classic. Plus: Maternal is a fast-paced and stressful new ...

The scheming mayor’s young ward, Atari, flies to the island in search of his pet, and falls in with a canine pack voiced by the likes of Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton and Bill Murray. The second of three shaming films by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein reaches the outbreak of war and unambiguous news of Nazi atrocities against European Jews. This new series of the compelling documentary strand was filmed last spring but even then – as paramedics respond to cardiac arrests, epileptic seizures and nasty falls – waiting times were stretching out alarmingly. This catchup revisits the venue a year later to see how Covid affected its attempt to attract a new clientele and balance the books. Last February, the BBC aired a charming documentary about a struggling Clacton working men’s club, which was attempting to modernise thanks to the proprietor’s daughters. It’s essentially a post-apocalyptic drama, but thanks to its origins, the story has real white-knuckle jeopardy.

Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Doom… la liste de bons jeux vidéo devenus mauvais films est longue. Dans le cas de The Last of Us, on a transposé cette ...

La distribution est solide, les lieux sont d’un réalisme époustouflant, alors que la musique et la caméra, en particulier l’utilisation de la lumière, nous immergent entièrement dans ce monde postapocalyptique. Le couple, habitué aux sorties en territoire hostile, se voit offrir une proposition de la leader des Fireflies, Marlene (Merle Dandridge, The Flight Attendant) : escorter la jeune Ellie (Bella Ramsey, Game of Thrones) dans un repaire du groupe rebelle à l’extérieur de la zone de quarantaine en retour du nécessaire pour quitter Boston. Après une vertigineuse scène qui illustre à quel point le monde s’est écroulé rapidement, on se retrouve en 2023 dans une zone de quarantaine (appelée QZ), à Boston. Le confort à l’intérieur de la zone de quarantaine est minimal, mais ce n’est rien par rapport à l’autre côté des murs dévasté et infesté d’« infectés ». Contrairement à la pandémie qui nous afflige, celle de ce monde n’est pas causée par un virus, mais par un champignon de type cordyceps. Le récit, les mécaniques de jeu, le graphisme, la musique, tout a été encensé, et plusieurs prix ont été remportés.

Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann was working on it to make sure it was faithful to the game. Chernobyl's Craig Mazin was writing it. It was on HBO. And when early ...

Fanboys made a big deal out of a quote where she said she was told not to play the game, implying that would make her performance unfaithful. While everyone remembers the breakout performance she gave in a few scenes as young Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones, she was a somewhat unknown quantity here. Hell, even one of the same actresses shows up to play the same role she had a decade ago (Marlene). HBO, even going through massive cutbacks in the David Zaslav era, has clearly unleashed the floodgates to give The Last of Us whatever budget it needs. Even getting my hopes way, way up ahead of the premiere of The Last of Us last night, even counting the series as one of my favorites in video game history, it actually exceeded my expectations. Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann was working on it to make sure it was faithful to the game.

Voyez-vous, The Last of Us est l'adaptation d'un jeu vidéo paru il y a déjà dix ans. À l'époque, les zombies et l'imaginaire post-apocalyptique avaient la côte.

In its first 25 minutes, the HBO adaptation of 'The Last of Us' achieves an energy the game longed to emulate.

For those with a strong attachment to the original work, the last decade was essentially building up to this moment, and what transpires in the TV adaptation is something close to a (The remake with more modern tech, released last fall, is only somewhat better.) Since this is a game, it’s also a sequence with a fail state. It’s really something to see a prestige TV show literally translate a scene from a game that was, in its own way, already emulating a prestige TV show. The plane crash, for example, is an invention for the show; in the video game, Sarah and Joel are knocked out when another car slams into theirs. The HBO remake of the outbreak sequence is striking in how it fully realizes what the original work was simulating. Playing the game, you can feel The Last of Us strain to use its elemental tools to achieve the kind of cinematic storytelling it’s going for, even as it’s ultimately successful. The camera assumes a view from the back seat, mimicking Sarah’s perspective as the family tries to get out of Dodge. (Though one could possibly argue Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, which does a ton of world-building through background elements that the camera often glides by, came quite close.) The very first character you control is Sarah, whom you guide through a splendid sequence that evokes the feeling of being a child alone at home. John Hannah plays the more portentous of the duo, laying out the mechanics of what will eventually drive the apocalypse in this universe: mind-controlling fungus, previously a phenomenon contained to the insect world, pushed by climate change to evolve such that it makes the jump into human beings. As someone long familiar with the source material, the choice is exciting: the HBO version places a premium on leaving room to breathe. This wasn’t necessarily the case in the source material. However, back in 2013, the game was still doing its best with the tools it had within the context of its medium.

The zombifying fungal infection that wiped out humanity in The Last of Us is based on a very real set of parasitic fungi that hijack insects and compel them ...

Though not confirmed, fans widely [expect](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/01/14/will-naughty-dogs-next-game-be-the-last-of-us-part-3/?sh=3d9fa9907d0f) Naughty Dog will announce a third title in the game’s main series in the future and Druckmann has openly stated he feels there is “more story to tell.” [said](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-cordyceps-infection-explained-neil-druckmann-craig-mazin-comments/) was taken to avoid actors having to wear obstructive gas masks for large portions of the show. This is a major departure from what happens in nature, where zombie fungi actually steer well clear of the brain and manipulate behavior with chemical signals, Hughes said. This discovery was made fairly recently and after the first game had been released. Presently, details are scarce, though a small amount of Araújo said it was a “shame” fungal spores have been removed from the show, a decision showmakers Since its release it has been remastered, remade and spawned a sequel, The Last of Us Part II. Though based on a game, viewers don’t need to have [played the game](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/01/15/do-you-need-to-have-played-the-last-of-us-to-watch-the-hbo-show/?sh=3fba09355f95) in order to follow or appreciate the show and it [is](https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2023/01/10/hbos-the-last-of-us-review/) reportedly a [faithful adaptation](https://www.theverge.com/23550842/hbo-the-last-of-us-neil-druckmann-craig-mazin-interview), albeit with some significant differences. [concept art](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-factions-multiplayer-gets-new-concept-art/1100-6510286/) has been released. The first episode of HBO’s The Last of Us was released on Sunday. The first game, released in 2013 by studio Naughty Dog, is one of the most De Bekker said it was great the infected are shown as living beings—rather than the less natural “undead” commonly deployed in the zombie genre—but that their aggressive behavior is not in line with what infected insects do.

Si vous avez écouté le premier épisode, vous connaissez déjà la réponse à cette question : oui, la série de HBO est très fidèle au jeu vidéo de Naughty Dog.

Le jeu vidéo est déjà très narratif et les performances de Troy Baker (Joel) et Ashley Johnson (Ellie) définissaient déjà les personnages. La série peut également se défaire du besoin d’un jeu vidéo de nous garder dans l’action en nous bombardant d’ennemis et d’obstacles. Le format télévisuel permet de sortir de ce carcan, d’aller ailleurs le temps de quelques scènes, voire un épisode presque complet comme il arrive dans le 3e épisode, où on a droit à une histoire émouvante qui n’est pas directement reliée à la quête des personnages principaux. La force d’un jeu vidéo est de créer rapidement un sentiment d’identification entre le joueur et un personnage, car on en prend littéralement le contrôle. Si vous avez écouté le premier épisode, vous connaissez déjà la réponse à cette question : oui, la série de HBO est très fidèle au jeu vidéo de Naughty Dog. Le premier épisode de la série reprend de très près les événements des premières heures du jeu vidéo.

The Last of Us Episode 1 finally premiered on HBO Max, bringing the adventures of Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie Williams (Bella Ramsey) into ...

Meanwhile, in the game, Joel and Tess take on the game’s first major antagonist, Robert, before meeting Ellie. In the series, Joel and Tess (Anna Torv) find Ellie in the Fireflies’ hideout, where Ellie fails to attack Joel with her switchblade. In both the game and the series, Joel keeps the watch to honor his daughter’s memory. No, Ellie is not Joel’s daughter, who didn’t survive the pandemic outbreak as seen in The Last of Us Episode 1. In the game, Sarah buys his father a watch for his birthday. Unlike the video game, where the story starts in 2013, The Last of Us series opens with a talk show featuring scientists discussing the threat of a brain-munching fungal plague.